Teachers are not supposed to have favorites, but we all know this is a lie. And if you ask me what my all time favorite lesson I ever taught was, my mind zaps back to a 6th grade French class in an international school in South Asia.
The room was filled with excited voices calling out phrases like "Do you have nine chairs?" or "Do you have forty-two pencils?" in French and other voices responding, "oui" or "non" followed by "Take it" or "Go fish!" in French. For 70 minutes my students, who two months prior had entered their first French class ever, were confidently playing "Go Fish" in French with cards they had made. Each card had a classroom object (from the previous unit) and a number (our current unit). And for the most part, my students took total control of their learning, executed the game extremely well and left me, their teacher, really bored.
Classrooms are not isolated cubicles. My most gratifying moment of exquisite boredom was partly due to the amazing school community I was working in, where *gasp* the administration treated me as an experienced professional, gave me all the tools I asked for (in this case, paper, markers and lamination) and left me to create a world of exploration inside my classroom. My glorious moment of boredom was also fueled by the language immersion summer camps I attended both as a camper and a counselor/ teacher that gave me the experiential confidence and skills to maintain a total language immersion classroom whist so many teachers I've met and worked with perpetuated the believe that immersion was possible "except" in a litany of situations teachers face daily or only with "exceptionally gifted students".
I also had my favorite lesson because I run my classroom on a few basic principles.
1) Use the language I'm teaching.
At this point in my career I have taught Spanish, French and English as foreign languages in three different countries in both private and public schools. In each case, my goal is to use the language I'm teaching exclusively. If the goal is for students to be able to function in another language, shouldn't my classroom be a daily practice ground for functioning in a different language?
2) Keep it simple.
I tried to use an American textbook for teaching Spanish- once. American foreign language textbooks are full of English (see principle 1) and large introductory paragraphs in English such as "Image you're a foreign exchange student in a Spanish-speaking country. Your host family and you... " that are confusing and waste valuable classroom time. Kids are bombarded with information throughout the school day and are constantly trying to figure out what is important and what is meaningless goobly-gook (of which, sadly, there is much). Why waste their time making them weed through a wordy instructional paragraph in English when I really want them to be doing something in Spanish? I tell students what I want. I use short sentences in the language I'm teaching. I give no more than 3 directions at a time. I make them repeat the directions back to me- in the language they're learning. I make my expectations clear by keeping them simple.
3) Don't dumb down, build a ladder students can climb up.
I have yet to be in a school where a colleague hasn't implied or directly stated that my expectations are too high. My philosophy is nothing is too hard if you build a ladder that leads to your goals and then help the students climb it, one rung at a time. I want my students to function in an immersion environment so I give them an opportunity to experience an immersion environment. Then we, as a class, develop a list of skills we can use to understand meaning in an immersion classroom and we then practice those skills every class. Give students the tools to learn, reenforce those tools and give them opportunities to use them. When they don't make it on the first, second, third, or fourth try, or stumble later on, don't punish or berate them. Re-teach the tools. Find new tools. My job as a teacher is to keep finding new ways to explain the tools until every student can be an active learner.
4) Be clear and consistent
My students know what I want. They're not mind readers; I tell them. And I tell them again. And I have posters on my walls that tell them what I want. And it's the same things the first day of school, the last day and every day in between. I tell them what they're supposed to be doing. And I tell them again. And when they didn't hear or register it the first, second or thirtieth time, I have students who already got it tell them. They're not punished for not knowing, but rewarded for asking. Questions are good, even if they're an admission of having been mentally absent for a moment. I want my students to be respectful, create a safe classroom where students can learn by taking risks and engage in the activities. And I'm constantly telling the students what this means and rewarding them with praise when they do it.
(If anyone want the worksheets I gave the kids or the template for the cards just give me a shout out. I'd be glad to share.)
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